Georgia Tech professors revolt over reopening, say current plan threatens lives | Hacker News Reader

Georgia Tech professors revolt over reopening, say current plan threatens lives

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192 pointstony101221 comments

I'd add that Georgia Tech is asking for Out-of-State and International Students to come in on July 24-26th, which is 2 weeks after the announcement was made (very recently). Which seems kinda absurd.

>If you have secured, or expect to have secured your visa, and plan to enroll for the fall semester on the Atlanta campus, you should plan for in-person, residential instruction.

>You will be asked to arrive in Atlanta between July 24-26 and be required to follow quarantine guidelines.

>Per guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, any individual who is traveling to the U.S. from an international destination should quarantine for 14 days upon arrival, monitor their health, and practice social distancing. This guidance should be followed by students planning to live in either on-campus housing or private housing located off-campus.

and also effectively binds them to this process because now you are making people fly domestically or internationally on very short notice...and will look ridiculous if they cancel that a week or two later.

I'm in a Georgia Tech Facebook group and this has been a really controversial issue, particularly among international students. They only provided 4-6 weeks notice before reopening, so not only is flying risky, it'll be expensive too. To make matters worse, some classes will be offered online, but students won't know if it is until after the semester has already started.

Did the students fly to their home countries?

They moved online after spring break. Many students went to their home countries and were asked not to come back for the remainder of the term.

and the online transition was bungled when the state university system overuled GT's president and insisted they stay in person, then changed their minds.

So campus went from 'we are coming back after break' to 'online after spring break' to 'coming back after an extended break' to 'online after spring break' in something like 96 hours.

As an American, I saw a lot of notices at the beginning of the pandemic encouraging Americans abroad to return home ASAP. I'd imagine other countries did the same.

Lots of universities closed their campus housing

I am a Georgia Tech faculty member. I've been reading this thread and considering how to respond, and decided I should be transparent. There are a lot of things being discussed here and I don't think I have the bandwidth to respond to all of them but I'm happy to try and answer some questions. No clue how to verify this but happy to do so non-publicly.

to answer a few questions I've seen in the thread

-no, faculty are not unionized

-nominally the concept of self governance and faculty roles in governance still exists at GT. However, when this began I'll be honest and saw a minimum amount (or role) of faculty governance involvement...which at the time didn't strike me as bad, until I saw how utterly unprepared the nominally professional management was to deal with things.

- We have gotten very mixed communication on fall instructional planning. By mixed I specifically mean what we have been told has changed AND is insufficient to make decisions about research, classes, or other things.

- We are also expected to support online only courses for international students and students with ADA accommodations who cannot attend classes in person.

I'll add a couple other notes...

It's interesting to see GT's experience here get picked up specifically and I think partially its just randomness, partially the other issues in Georgia, partially the particular failures of GT/the university system of Georgia.

Basically, GT is in the same boat as many other places...working on the assumption that students will pick the university with in person or take a gap year before doing online. So everyone, to some extent, is bluffing each other. Now it's a race to see who admits they were wrong first. You are starting to see it (or have already seen it) from private universities mostly because they have total control over their financial state and (in some cases) an immutable reputation that won't be damaged (think: MIT, Harvard, etc.) by being conservative. For everyone else, it's a crap shoot.

> It's interesting to see GT's experience here get picked up specifically and I think partially its just randomness, partially the other issues in Georgia, partially the particular failures of GT/the university system of Georgia.

It's a tech school, and this is a tech blog, plus GA (as a proxy for the south in general) has a lot of the COVID and has not done a fantastic job managing outbreaks. Makes sense it's a source of scrutiny.

When I say picked up I mean by the general media.

Yes HN is tech focused....but the GT specific story has been reported by a number of news outlets while similar stories at other universities have not. It started with a story in the local press, and has ballooned. There are other campuses in Georgia where faculty are doing similar things with no/little coverage. Obviously GT is more well known...but there is an element of commenting on all of Academia via proxy.

I'm of the mind that everyone shows up to campus. About two weeks go by, covid spreading like wildfire the entire time, and then the admins are forced to send everyone back home as case counts skyrocket. Thoughts?

yup!

that is my guess honestly. Not an epidemiologist but surrounded by them.

Everything is about added probabilities...every student that travels interacts with an increased number of people, their probability goes up. there are thousands of students in the same general area, their probabilities go up. The staff (e.g., dining staff) and faculty come from the local areas, probabilities go up. If one student brings it, they are then in unavoidably tight spaces with other students and faculty...probability of transmission goes up.

If I were asked, I would model transmission at a university closer to an aircraft carrier than a city.

Given the current numbers in the US, it does not seem likely that you can reopen universities in any kind of safe way. Anything that puts a lot of people into small rooms is problematic, and I really can't see anything that is close to the regular operation being possible in the fall.

The only way to be able to reopen inherently risky activities like this is to suppress the virus sufficiently that you can handle the remainder with mask mandates, contact tracing and prohibiting mass events. I'm in Germany where the number of cases is drastically lower than in the US right now, and I doubt we'll be able to reopen universities fully in the fall. With the dramatic numbers from the US right now, it does seem extremely unlikely that they could be controlled enough in the fall to make any kind of reopening safe.

The goals are different, though. US universities don't hope to find a reopening plan that won't spread the virus at all; they just want to find a way to keep it from spreading too much.

I don’t get the impression that anyone expects anything to be 100% safe. This is a straw man. Everyone agrees the goal is to prevent it from spreading “too much,” but any proposed school reopenings (from kindergarten up to university) look like they’d land way above the line of acceptable spread.

Maybe a line we can all agree on is: If the expected resulting R_0 is above 1, it’s probably not a good plan as it will not be sustainable. Since you probably can’t know whether it’ll result in an R_0 above 1 before doing it, then in order to reopen you must have robust surveillance in place to quickly detect the R_0 and have a plan to shut back down in the case it reaches 1.

There's quibbles about whether the boundary needs to be exactly 1, but yeah, I agree with your core point. A reopening plan needs a strategy for how to scale back if something goes wrong, and it's hard to imagine how you could scale back transmission in a dorm full of college students.

Yeah, I think there’s maybe a more general solution of the form: Places can publicly declare their R_0 threshold for shutdown and their surveillance mechanism to detect when it’s hit.

I would imagine that, given a detailed surveillance mechanism that’s strictly adhered to, you could calculate the maximum “time to detection” of how soon after hitting that threshold you’d know about it.

Post those 4 things: R_0 threshold, surveillance mechanism, time-to-detection, and shutdown plan then people can choose if they want to sign up for that risk.

Of course in the education case specifically, the real crux of the issue is the differential between the educators’ (generally older) risk tolerance and those of the students/the needs of students families (in the pre-university case).

> Post those 4 things: R_0 threshold, surveillance mechanism, time-to-detection, and shutdown plan then people can choose if they want to sign up for that risk.

That's exactly what's driven me batty about governments' responses.

After the initial lockdown, that's precisely what they should have done.

Instead, we got a schizophrenic "Everything is fine" and then "Everything is danger! Surprise second lockdown!"

No wonder people are pissed. It'd be better and more effective policy to just lay out the methods, criteria, and current status.

(PS: Technically, you're talking about R_t, or current, rather than R_0, or initial)

Oof, indeed! Thank you for the correction.

Lots of things broken with public response unfortunately.

Sure! Ethan's have to watch out for each other. Just noticed your first name on this reply.

Btw (because I also peeked at other links), if another UX discovery data point re: pharma research would help, flip me an email (in profile). My father just retired from T10 drug discovery R&D (pathology), and would probably be willing to talk your ear off re: process issues.

Amazing! Thank you. Will be reaching out :)

I don't think that is possible in situations that are suitable for SARS-CoV2 transmissions. The most extreme example is probably the meat processing plants, it spread like crazy in those conditions. Another example is the choir practices that also infected a lot of the participants.

Anything that happens under the conditions suitable for superspreading events probably can't rely on any half-measures.

or, just let what will happen, happen? i hear a lot about case numbers, almost nothing about mortality rates

Mortality is not the only thing that matters. We don’t know what this virus does to survivors, even potentially asymptomatic ones. The little that we do know appears to be alarming (potentially permanent lung damage, some potential cases of brain damage).

We already know about viruses that sit inside people asymptomatically for years and years before wreaking havoc. Of course we cannot live permanently paralyzed by “what ifs,” but planning that focuses entirely on mortality rate is ignoring a huge, huge piece of this equation.

Many survivors are left with permanent health effects.

You may not die, but you may not be able to practice your favorite sports ever again because of permanent lung scarring.

There is no evidence that there are significant long term health implications for the vast, vast majority of people infected by this coronavirus. If you have citations that state otherwise, please share.

This shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

The parent comment may be referring to the growing number of “long haulers” who have “recovered” yet seem to be suffering from chronic symptoms. [1]

This may be anecdotal, but it’s a growing number of people and worth taking seriously. This is a novel virus, after all.

1: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/06/covid-19-...

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Not necessarily "absence", but it does provide an upper bound. There are millions of people who have survived the virus. If it was common to be incapacitated for months, we'd have more than anecdotes.

I have been ill for 4 months now.

There are stories coming out of people who have not died but certainly have not "recovered" in the sense most people would expect. See this for instance: https://twitter.com/DaniOliver/status/1279155358666305541 I don't really know how you expect students to complete their education if they're ill like that.

Also, even if that weren't the case and everyone did recover completely after two weeks, missing two weeks out of a 15-week college class is quite a bit. So even if your plan is to have your students get covid at some point in the term, have some fraction be asymptomatic, some fraction recover from it, and a couple of them die, you still need some sort of coherent educational plan for the large fraction that are going to be in the campus ICU for a couple of weeks.

I think you missed the whole reason to “flatten the curve”. The hospitalization rate is the problem, not mortality rate. 20-30% of people who get the virus end up in the hospital since there are no known treatments available. For now, if we have hospital capacity you’re very likely to survive COVID-19. If we run out of supplies and overwhelm the limited medical staff the mortality rate is going to skyrocket and we will run out of places to store the dead bodies.

20-30% of people who get the virus end up in the hospital

That's way too high. According to https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page, 0.65% of New York City residents have been hospitalized for COVID-19. Antibody tests show at least 20% of NYC residents have been infected, so the hospitalization rate is more like 3%.

Safety is not a binary condition. Since eradicating the virus is no longer a feasible option in most places, the risk level going forward is inevitably going to be higher than it was a year ago. Even the development of a vaccine won't fundamentally change that reality. So we're going to have to lower our expectations of safety.

> So we're going to have to lower our expectations of safety.

We really don't. In-person classes at a university are not something one should risk infection for. Yes, remote classes are not ideal. Dying, killing others, and having a lifetime of potential complications, are all worse.

> Since eradicating the virus is no longer a feasible option in most places

You have cause and effect backwards. Eradicating the virus is harder because of continued failures to maintain measures keeping it under control.

Given how many people have gone through the disease (nearly everywhere it is < 5%, so essentially no difference vs February) you can't really open anything anywhere safely, not without a plan for fast shutdown and accurate measurements to trigger that shutdown. Unless there's a vaccine. This is just basic SIR modelling, epidemiology 101.

Compartmental models are not typically covered in an introductory epidemiology course.

Usually not covered until an advanced methods course.

But do you disagree with the main point?

It's sound epidemiology, but I still reluctantly disagree on practical/political grounds:

1) There appears to be no serious effort to extend the initial CARE payments into the summer and fall. As such, we can't possibly close force more businesses to close and then just stand by as people lose their homes and starve. We're already experiencing significant social instability. We have to be very careful about this, not to mention to core moral issues.

2) Our country is so divided (and most of us have played a role in that, myself included) that it's impossible for the government to order such strict interventions without invoking massive backlash from a significant portion of the population. And again, back to my point about social instability. COVID-19 is far from the worst thing that could happen to the country at this point.

Can't argue with that. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

My alma mater recently sent out an email of their plans to reopen campus this fall. Their reasoning is a study done by the operations research department found that even if they do classes online in fall, many students will return to campus anyways, only without monitoring and testing in place. Reopening campus would at least give the university some control over student behavior.

That's like saying that all the WFH firms should herd the employees back into the office, because their employees are out and about visiting friends and shopping for groceries, anyways.

This comparison isn't quite accurate, because we're talking about students relocating physically, which isn't as likely to happen in an employee WFH situation.

Cornell?

What specific numbers? Everything I've seen shows way more people have been exposed than though, a vast majority of them don't even generate anitbodies, and the overall fatality rates all across the board are dropping.

Just go to the beaches in Indiana and Florida and you'll see thousands of people out on the beaches, and it's been that way for a month and there's no spike in Fatalities (and please don't go on about cases. Those numbers include PCR, antibody and everyone who is getting test now for regular procedures at hospitals who are testing positive but have had no or minimal symptoms).

Reposted from a previous comment, as answering the same thought:

The danger of SARS-CoV-2, given the relatively low mortality (and based on genetic modeling of potential mutations), was never that it was going to crest with Ebola-like proportions (you get it, you die), but that it was going to crest with a magnitude that would overwhelm available medical resources.

Unfortunately, that crest is a binary proposition: either you have spare medical capacity (and serious Covid-19 patients receive high-quality care) or you have none (and serious Covid-19 patients receive no treatment).

So the danger is not death rates now. The danger is (effective reproductive number) -> (expected case count) -> (serious, hospitalized cases of Covid-19) -> (exhausted medical capacity) -> (Italy-esque spike in deaths).

In some universities in Spain, they have mandatory antibody tests, and they divide students in 3 groups: the ones with antibodies, the ones without and sick people that can follow the classes online.

To enter the buildings in the campus, you need to get a "passport", after completing antibody test and lots of questions... Some preconditions, like being asthmatic disqualifies you (so you need to follow classes online). Also, they have several new rules, like using only stairs to move across floors, minimum distance, thermal cameras, etc.

It's a new world in many aspects.

Reading this, I can't believe how far behind North America is with respect to this virus. When it comes to day to day life, we have very little new, quality information compared to March.

I'm not saying what Spain is doing is great, but it feels like an iterative step to remove a few top layers of anxiety

It's been fascinating in a dark way to see how cultural differences from place to place are translating into vastly different responses to this situation (and vastly different outcomes) from country to country and from state to state within the US.

How often do we get to see the entire world deal with the same problem at the same time for such a sustained period?

From a game theory perspective it seems very risky to give young people an incentive to be infected. When people have tangible benefits from having antibodies, a subset of the population is sure to "aquire" them.

With those complex rules (have antibodies but use an inhaler means you are banned), would it not just be better to have everything online?

I feel for the students, but reopening the school for in-person classes makes no sense.

If a student flies home, they face one day of risk. If school reopens for in-person classes, then they'll face hundreds of days of risk.

That single day of flying may not even be as risky as a single day of classes (never mind hundreds of days of classes), because not nearly as many people fly these days due to fear of the pandemic.

Also, if classes reopen, many of the people that get sick (who'll be far more numerous than those that get sick from flying a single day) will spread the sickness to others, causing way more knock-on effects than those caused by a small number of students flying one day.

The risk is so incredibly low thought, especially since most of these students will be under 30! There is something important about in-person classes you don't really get online and I'd hate to be forced to be online only.

We've lost a whole year, to a virus that is nowhere near as deadly as anyone thought it'd be, and it will likely die, or we'll reach herd immunity, long before any virus can be safely manufactured.

I feel like a lot of this is fear, hysteria and an completely inability for humans to properly assess risk, mixed with just a plethora of bad and conflicting information.

How about faculty? Professors are, on average, more than 40 years old. Do you think they should teach in person?

During lecture at least, students are always at least 6 feet away from the professor. Moving to and from classes is a different story, though.

6' is nowhere near enough distance to be safe indoors in a room with potentially up to hundreds of other people in it. The virus can stay airborne for hours in enclosed indoor spaces.

If you have a lecture hall of 100 people that meets regularly each week, and the people in it aren't wearing good masks, it's practically a guarantee that by the end of the semester everyone there will have gotten it.

Yep. Don't forget about air conditioning, as well as shared facilities such as restrooms, break rooms, cafeterias, and so on.

And don't forget _bad_ air conditioning / poor ventilation in old buildings, with which universities are replete.

The 6' rule isn't a magic bubble of impenetrability. It's just a rule of thumb that (1) most people can easily interpret and enforce and (2) is expected to reduce the rate of spread "enough" to make it worth enforcing.

Likewise masks don't make you safe, they make you safer, etc...

> inability for humans to properly assess risk

Would you be willing to entertain the same thought for yourself?

As somebody who is just wrapping up university, got the coronavirus, and know other young and middle-aged people who got the coronavirus, the virus can both be super mild and super aggressive from one person to the next.

I was mostly physically fine but I was miserable for the entire time I had it. One other person who got sick went from that same mild shitty experience I had to not being able to breath in a matter of hours.

Older people get it worse but from what I've seen and what I've heard from a family member(they work with COVID-19 patients), it's basically a coin toss whether somebody ends up asymptomatic, gets it mildly, or gets it absolutely brutally.

Another thing to consider is that universities will still have to deal with students going out and getting absolutely tattered at bars and parties. We've already seen smaller incidents of this resulting in an explosion of cases. Knowing how university culture is, things will get bad very quickly.

Even ignoring the party culture, students will come to class sick out of fear. I've felt bad doing this in the past but the unwritten expectation for classes with attendance is "show up unless you literally can't walk". If you actually reach out to the prof, they'll tell you to stay home but most students will just assume the worst and try to show up.

Sorry for ranting a bit but I just can't see universities safely opening up with how the culture is at the moment. Online courses are not nearly as good in most cases (and I say this as someone who generally prefers online or recorded lecture courses) but it'll be a disaster to have in person courses with how things are.

I am trying to understand this comment in this context. The commentor above you talks about the statistical fact that cases under in younger people are not only rarer, but very low chance of getting hospitalized, and an even lower chance of death.

You then respond with an anecdote of experience talking about the potential outcomes of this virus. Why exactly is this? Of course there are terrible potential outcomes in everyday actions we take. We might face a car crash, we might get hit by lightning. Why should we treat this matter any different than that?

Only difference I see being is that this is infectious, and with the professors usually being of older age, there should definitely be some protections in place. But lets at least shift towards talking about being infectious, and not talking about plainly getting COVID, because the implications of that are on complete different scales of magnitude depending on your personal charasterstics.

Also, you seem to talk in your latter parts of the comment about things that are not set in stone. E.g. Class attendance could be made nonmandatory and not affect grades. Also, parties could on campus could be restricted.

I like your phrase "statistical fact". I don't really know what you mean when you use it, but thinking back on my statistics class, I think it's a pretty funny turn of phrase.

By that phrase I mean "The risk is so incredibly low though". Which to me is a statistical fact. But I think I get what you mean - statistics/data can be combined with language or visuals to enforce multiple different interpretations.

> commentor above you talks about the statistical fact

No, the commenter above talked about the "risk", and cited that one fact. Both of you are forgetting that sick people are infectious. We're trying to control an epidemic here, not save the lives of some particular GT students. If they get sick they'll make others sick. One of those cases might be your grandfather.

I am not sure if you read my comment through. I mentioned sick people being infectious, and urged the discussion to move towards how sick people infect others, and how long they are infectious.

I would love to learn more about how sick people transmit the disease, and when are they the most "infectious". I have heard something related to a period of few days before showing first symptoms, but I have yet to discover more indepth discussion around it.

For example, its pretty hard for me to undertand how you can be "very infectious" when you do not exhibit symptoms such as coughing or sneezing. Would love to learn more!

> the statistical fact that cases under in younger people are not only rarer, but very low chance of getting hospitalized, and an even lower chance of death

What are the latest — preferably peer-reviewed — figures on hospitalization and death rate by age? I was trying to find them the other day, but all I could find was papers from many months ago.

>> Even ignoring the party culture, students will come to class sick out of fear. I've felt bad doing this in the past but the unwritten expectation for classes with attendance is "show up unless you literally can't walk". If you actually reach out to the prof, they'll tell you to stay home but most students will just assume the worst and try to show up.

You touch on two good points. I've been both the student and the prof. When a kid comes to class sweating, barely awake and obviously unwell, too many profs assume that they are simply hung over from the night before. I think that is root of show-up-if-you-can-walk. But my reality as a student was totally different (UBC late 90s->early 00s). Most kids didn't party. Most didn't drink more than once a month. There was a core of frat kids who lived like animal house, but the vast majority of us were too busy. We had jobs. We had to study. We had to commute in to school each day. We spent the weekends skiing or rock climbing, not passing out on the floor.

I had a fulltime job. The one time I fell asleep in class my prof asked me what was wrong. I said I was "up late last night". He assumed I meant that was out partying. The reality was that something broke at work. I had to work into the small hours. My prof had not even considered that I had a real job (not a part-time waiter) totally outside of school. We need to get past such dated assumptions about "students".

I agree with the other stuff, but I definitely think, at least for now, the culture on showing up sick has changed. If you go into public, especially show up in an enclosed space and have so much as the sniffles, you are going to be run out pretty quickly.

It varies wildly. Especially amidst young people, many of whom feel that the virus is not a big risk for them due to their age group. One young friend of mine recently expressed that they want to get sick, because they're sick (pun intended) of living in social isolation and constant vigilance.

>> One young friend of mine recently expressed that they want to get sick

I am hearing this more and more. Whether it is for future "immunity passports" or just to get past all the fear, many young people see COVID-19 as inevitable. Better to get it now during lockdown than after everyone heads back to work/school.

One thing that is cropping up is the fact that young people really do not appreciate old people telling them what to do with their bodies. Grandma telling you to disinfect your hands is one thing. Grandma telling you that you aren't allowed in the same room as your boy/girlfriend for the next year is another. Listening to the police talk about the parties they break up, they sound like chaperones at a school dance trying to enforce a no-touching rule.

I can appreciate the sentiment and have said something to that effect myself, but as a parent post rightly pointed out -- the onset of severe, hospitalisation-worthy or fatal illness is basically a coin toss. Yes, it seems to be more likely in older people, but it is far from unheard of in younger people.

Furthermore, there's still a great deal of uncertainty as to what chronic or long-term effects infection can visit even upon those who recover. While most accounts of that concern those who suffered serious complications, it's far from clear that those with mild symptoms can't be affected similarly.

Realistically, going out of one's way to get infected is dangerously irrational with as little as we still know.

Except that a statistically huge number of people have gotten this and recovered. 1 in 6 people in London has recovered (as reported by antibody testing). Those people certainly know how it will impact them. We are no longer in the "we don't know" phase. As for long term health, this seems no different than any other pneumonia which can have measurable effects for years.

This is untrue. The Kawasaki-like inflammation in children and increased stroke risk in all patients after recovery are far more serious than pneumonia recovery. We have no clue about long term effects because the disease is new, nor the duration or extent of immunity.

Reminds me of "chicken pox parties" in the 80s and 90s. Which we have now learned are a terrible idea.

COVID-19 is causing strokes in young people [1]. While young people are hospitalized at a lower rate, it still happens. Texas, which has until recently been "reopening", with no mask requirements, has a very high rate of infections. Using Travis county as an example, ~30% of cases are in the 20-29 age bracket [2]. It would be disingenuous to imply that young people are isolated from the rest of society and not spreading the disease to older people who are more likely to die.

In 2-3 months, 132,000 people in the US have died from COVID-19 complications. The CDC estimates yearly flu deaths at 12,000-61,000 [3]. Further, we are now seeing a huge increase in the rate of cases in states which have had lax distancing and quarantine policy--see Travis county data again for example.

Is a year of in-person class worth the risk? Hard to say. No reason to dismiss legitimate concerns as "hysteria", though.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/health/coronavirus-stroke...

2. https://austin.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#...

3. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

Look there are two groups in the US. A risk taking group that sees the COVID-19 death rate as acceptable and not nearly bad enough to stay locked down. They believe that the purpose of the lock down was to "flatten the curve," particularly the death rate, and not to "stop the virus."

The other group wants to "stop the virus" and does not accept the risk of death of others.

There is no bridging the gap with data, it is a value judgement. You can't argue someone out of their values.

You especially will not be able to convince the risk takers, because they are risk takers, and the mortality of this virus is so low that a huge number of people don't personally know a single person who has died from it. Perception matters a lot.

If COVID-19 had a 10% death rate, or killed children like Tuberculosis, you could more easily argue down the risk takers.

According to CDC data, 81% of deaths from COVID-19 in the United States are people over 65 years old, most with preexisting conditions. If you add in 55-64-year-olds that number jumps to 93%. For those below age 55, preexisting conditions play a significant role, but the death rate is currently around 0.0022%, or one death per 45,000 people in this age range. Below 25 years old the fatality rate of COVID-19 is 0.00008%, or roughly one in 1.25 million.

These are odds any risk taker would take.

This accounts only for death. The virus is leaving some unfortunate people with long-term pulmonary, cardiac, kidney, and/or liver damage. Some are even developing diabetes symptoms after the infection subsides.

We seriously need to consider long-term damage to health as part of the equation.

I would like to see the statistics on these reports, not just mortality rate.

There’s already evidence it causes immune system disregulation, similar to HIV:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/health/coronavirus-immune...

The idea that we know anything meaningful about what impact COVID will have on people’s long term health is foolhardy to the extreme. Extreme precaution is the only reasonable path in the face of these kinds of unknowns.

How often does covid leave people that type of damage? I've heard of individual cases but haven't seen how rare or common it is.

I think this is still under study. I've heard a number of 67% of mild/asympotmatic cases having evidence of lung damage (https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/23/8645362... says 57%). I also saw an interview with an Israeli Dr. who is doing a study (that study is in progress) who said significant numbers suffer from symptoms like fatigue, shortness of breath (I think this may be the same one: https://www.timesofisrael.com/its-frightening-doctors-say-ha... ).

I think the bottom line is we don't know for sure but if needed a little more evidence this isn't just a walk in the park I think we got some.

In addition to the fact that you're neglecting to take possible long-term health consequences into account, you're also failing to consider the health risks to people other than the students, like faculty, staff, and even the parents and grandparents of the student body.

No the risk takers are taking all of that into account and dismissing it as acceptable.

It is a difference in values. You are arguing as if presented with same data that you have there is only one obvious and rational conclusion, but that is simply not the case. If someone has different values they can come to a very different conclusion.

This perspective equates to “I’m fine with masses of people getting sick and dying unnecessarily,” which basically makes you a nihilist. I guess that’s a “difference in values,” but not one on which we should base any collective decisions.

Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and New Zealand have this situation under control without mass injury or loss of life. Turning away from those examples because you don’t care is basically the same as any other form of science denialism.

I'm specifically responding to your last section:

These are odds any risk taker would take.

I read this as being focused on the students, and ignoring the fact that many of the potentially affected people would be in the 65+ group that is most at risk. You seem to be ignoring that in favor of focusing on the minuscule risk of death to college students themselves.

Problem with the odds is that they are moving. What does the death rate jump to with overrun hospitals?

What does the death rate jump to for all other medical emergencies and illnesses with an overrun medical system?

I'm not even in the US but I feel like I have to respond (I'm in Canada so in a sense the US situation is impacting me as well).

There are large groups who don't believe in science, that believe the dinosaurs never existed, some even think the world is flat. Among other beliefs. And yes, those people will not be convinced by any amount of data or evidence. I guess that's life.

And yet, there's is no doubt in my mind that the right thing to do is to take measures to control the spread of the virus.

We're not talking about "stay locked down", we're talking about practicing common sense measures that bring the epidemic under control, like wear masks, physical distancing, wash your hands. The counter-arguments that we're hearing from some circles about how maybe masks infringe on people's rights are just beyond belief.

Right now the US has 130k deaths with maybe 5%-10% of the population having had the disease, it's not just about deaths though, how many people have been very seriously ill, how many will suffer some consequences for the rest of their lives? We don't know what longer term risks are, we don't even know if getting the disease makes you immune. Even without knowing that the social and economic costs of just letting this spread uncontrollably are huge.

Now those people who are "risk takers" aren't just risking themselves getting sick. Their family can get sick. Their friends can get sick. Their friend's family can get sick. Do you want to be the guy who got your friend's father sick and he dies? I'm sorry but there's no excuse. Anyhow, we don't have to convince the risk takers, we can force them to behave the way that society expects them to behave. We don't say hey let them rob a bank, the risk is low, they're just risk takers...

And it's really not the US, it's the world, we have over 500k deaths worldwide (that we know of), and we're only getting started.

No the risk takers are taking all of that into account and dismissing it as acceptable.

Take Sweden for example, many people view it as a success and the higher than the rest of the EU death rate perfectly acceptable.

Life isn’t life to some if you can’t live it.

The data isn’t black and white. Of course you are comfortable forcing people to behave, Canada is fairly totalitarian in policing of speech, etc. Would never fly in the US.

Canada isn't totalitarian in policing of speech or anything else. The US is perfectly happy to force people to behave, look at the rate of imprisonment vs. many other countries. Look at how peaceful protests are being handled in the US vs. other countries.

Let's just apply your argument to speeding. If I'm a risk taker why can't I drive 100MPH in a residential neighbourhood? Heck, life isn't worth living if I can't get that thrill. Tell that story to the US cop that pulls you over. Naturally the others you are putting in danger, their lives are worth nothin'.

You're right, it's all about values.

It is the difference between people who care about others and people who do not. Civilised society rightly considers the latter a menace and deals with them accordingly.

Sweden is now a pariah state in the EU, its borders have been closed by its neighbors.

> Canada is fairly totalitarian in policing of speech, etc. Would never fly in the US.

I'm an American living in Canada and that's just straight up incorrect. The level of discourse is effectively the same as in the US.

Please if you could (honestly curious) post links to the sources for these mortality rates by age group. I'd love to show them to a few people I know, and see where they come from.

And do those rates apply to those who have been infected or to the population in general for these age groups.

>>The risk is so incredibly low thought, especially since most of these students will be under 30!

Covid has the potential to cause long-lasting organ damage even in young patients.

Furthermore, hospital ICU capacities are always a concern. Once ICUs fill up, non-covid patients cannot be treated in intensive care either.

This[1] tells us 2017-18 was a bad influenza year in the USA with 61,000 deaths, 2018-19 34,000 deaths.

This[2] tells us Coronoa deaths in the USA to date are 129,576.

How do you reconcile your opinion this doesn't represent a considerable risk with these numbers?

1. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

2. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/us-c...

Please bear in mind that these flu deaths occur in a context that includes a large percentage of the population having been immunized via flu shots and lingering resistance from having beaten previous attacks of the flu. The coronavirus on the other hand is moving through a population with until recently virtually no innate immunity and obviously no vaccination measures in place. Taking these into account puts its higher number of fatalities into a bit more perspective (and still leaves us far short of previous estimates about how many people would soon die in the U.S). Overall, globally, based on the latest information, the known number of deaths is well below what many were estimating at the beginning of the year, and we are now several months into this. This is worth keeping in mind too.

Also worth noting that the whole world went through two different pandemics in the 50's and 60s in which over 1 million people died worldwide. Things went back to normal quite soon afterwards and much less hysteria about shutting down economies, borders and all social life was evident. (in both of these pandemics over 100,000 people in the U.S alone also died)

Hey, thanks for the thoughtful response.

Yeah, I keep flipping between feeling exasperated by the situation, and then remembering the perspective you've detailed here.

Side note, I think you mean adaptive immunity, this is the part of the immune system creates immunological memory. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_immune_system

Innate immunity is the non-specific part of the immune system and includes aspects such as removal of foreign substances, physical and chemical barriers (eg, skin, clotting factors in blood) and other anatomical barriers like the blood-brain barrier. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innate_immune_system#Anatomica...

Yes, apologies, adaptive immunity is what I was referring to, slipped up on the terms there,

Careless young people have been a major vector for the spread of coronavirus.

Many of them might survive, but they're putting the rest of us at increased risk of death.

That's not ok.

I think your comment would have been much stronger if instead of "Many of them might survive" you said something more akin to "The overwhelming majority will survive". Falsely weakening it as you did will cause people to distrust the rest of your message, which I feel is accurate as it stands. Why did you choose the phrasing that you used?

They care about you about as much as you care for them. This is just their way of saying thanks for global warming and all the government debt.

Apart from the fact that there is still substantial (if less) risk to younger people the real reason for lock down is to reduce the spread.

It's proved impossible - even with very strong measures - to protect at-risk groups by isolation. See both Australia (where a very large number of deaths were in supposedly isolated nursing homes) and Sweden (same).

As an Australian, your second point is hard to vindicate. The total death toll in Australia is 106 as of one hour ago as reported by the state-funded ABC[0].

While it's true that just one of those was a person under the age of fifty[1], and unfortunately I live in the _one_ state that's experiencing a second wave via community transmission and sadly expect these numbers to grow, this isn't comparable with the numbers seen coming out of Sweden.

In fact, it's an order of magnitude lower, for a country with more than double Sweden's population, so to suggest that at-risk groups are experiencing a similar level of risk is baffling to me.

[0]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-06/coronavirus-australia... [1]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-17/coronavirus-cases-dat...

(I'm Australian)

62/106 deaths from COVID in Australia have been in nursing homes[1][2].

The point isn't that Australia hasn't done well (it has!). The point is that even in the best possible circumstances it still proved impossible to keep nursing home patients safe.

In Sweden the plan was to keep nursing homes isolated too, and it didn't work there either.[3]

[1] https://www.health.gov.au/resources/covid-19-cases-in-aged-c...

[2] https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavir...

[3] https://www.thelocal.se/20200506/coronavirus-what-went-wrong...

Sorry about missing you were down under, I only checked after hitting submit. And thanks for clarifying, I had no idea Sweden moved to isolate nursing homes.

That said, I'm still hesitant to equate the risk level to the elderly from community-wide lockdown measures with isolation policies restricted to nursing homes. I don't have any data to support it, but I can't help but assume that lower community transmission overall correlates with fewer transmission vectors into nursing homes. Supposedly this would turn up in the proportion of those in nursing homes that's suffered coronavirus. In principle I agree with you; the hotel scandals in Vic bear that out, ironically, and sadly. But the difference in magnitude has to count for something, as bad as any toll is.

Yes, a reduction in community transmission should reduce transmissions into nursing homes (and more broadly to vulnerable people generally).

That was the point of my original comment.

> The risk is so incredibly low thought, especially since most of these students will be under 30!

That "risk" is the personal risk of dying of those particular students. You're not including the people they'll infect. Go check out Georgia's growth curve. One extra case could easily produce dozens of others in a density like that.

It absolutely stuns me that after MONTHS of pandemic there are people who still refuse to understand this.

Understanding it would entail taking responsibility for actions already taken, and the harm already caused by those actions.

People want to be "good". They want to feel that their actions, if not perfect, are at least morally defensible. This seems to lead to a sort of tipping point where once a person has acted in a way that would make them "bad", it becomes easier to construct a new narrative where refusing to wear a mask is heroic and patriotic, than to process the remorse of having made a terrible mistake. And that's especially appealing if there is an entire group of people eager to tell you that you're right and good, in order to reinforce their own worldviews.

The bottom line seems to be that in order to lead people back to reality, you need to find a way to let them feel good about their choices. Maybe that means nodding along when they say "The science was unclear. We couldn't have known." I'm not sure. I've been thinking about this for a while now, having relatives in Sweden who just don't seem to take the pandemic seriously. The problem is that their institutions still haven't reached the point of admitting that they were mistaken, so the public can't seem to begin that process either.

>I feel for the students, but reopening the school for in-person classes makes no sense.

It makes sense to me. Univeristies (aside from some of the most prestigious/well endowed, and even some of them) operate like any other US business. Students are the customers and if you don't have customers you're not going to survive.

The option for universities not opening is to move to remote learning models at which point you're now competeing more directly with other online universities as well as a wider range of traditional brick and mortar universities. You're also competing with mountains of online information available freely for many disciplines in a world where a college degree is being devalued. Many universities were already starting to struggle to meet growth expectations, COVID exacerbated and accelerated this issue.

So just like every other business foaming at the mouth to get revenue streams flowing again as a primary goal to remain competitive and succeed, colleges are following suit. Other factors are considered secondary to those restarts.

> Many universities were already starting to struggle to meet growth expectations

This sentence pretty much summarizes the sad state of the US tertiary education system.

Makes a lot of sense. Professors of high age are at very increased risk. Students fit in tight spaces would for sure include asymptomatic careers. And any hope of expecting an entire student community to take utmost caution is simply futile.

I assume this is a $ issue for them, they won’t be able to charge what they normally charge for online classes so they try to bring people in somehow edit: normally charge for campus

That may be part of it, but a not-insiginificant part of the issue is that Georgia Tech, as an institution, isn't allowed to set the rules. The Georgia Board of Regents has relatively tight control (presumably through budgetary means, if not explicit control means) over the policies schools are allowed to implement. So even if GT leadership wanted to implement something like a mask-required or an online-classes-by-request, no questions asked rule, it isn't actually allowed to by the state.

GT's leadership is still somewhat culpable, don't get me wrong the President could be doing better, but the buck doesn't stop with him in this case.

This is right on, and just another example of GT (a top tier engineering school) being physically located in, and largely beholden to, a state that doesn’t care about, or is downright hostile to all things “technology”/“smart”.

I love my alma mater, but I wish somebody over at Emory would have figured out a way to buy out the state at some point and have us as part of them.

> a state that doesn’t care about, or is downright hostile to all things “technology”/“smart”.

I know this is a generalization, but I find it kind of egregious. Georgia is one of the only states left (AFAIK) where you can essentially attend an in-state college for free if you have a high enough GPA [0]. You can argue about the means by which that is achieved (the lottery), but as a current Tech student I know plenty of very talented students who wouldn't be able to attend college, let alone an engineering school, without these scholarship programs. I doubt that a state/government that truly was anti-technology or anti-"smart" would funnel what must be billions of dollars a year into academic scholarships.

[0]: https://www.gafutures.org/hope-state-aid-programs/hope-zell-...

It is also the state where the governor said I didn't know COVID could be spread person to person. The people decided this man was the best person to make decisions on our behalf.

Having a lottery determine who gets in is anti-smart (to steal your word) because it doesn't reward based on anything other than randomness. Maybe better described as socialist

The lottery he’s referring to is the state lottery, as in gambling.

All proceeds from the state lottery must, by law, go fund pre-K education and college tuition.

This was a necessary condition to legalize the lottery because conservative rural GA Christians believe lotteries are sinful.

In GA pre-K and state colleges are free to state residents.

What a backwards bunch of hicks! /sarcasm

Largely the state leadership is in for the economic benefits, but not the social consequences of having a more educated population.

If Tech CS students and faculty revolt, we'll welcome them with open arms at Emory, where the entire CS department is teaching online this fall.

Sadly the tuition at emory is 4x the price of Georgia Tech in state tuition.

Not to mention that HOPE is funded by the lottery (or at least it was when I decided to not go to Georgia Tech with all other friends and instead went up North).

So financial aid / scholarships are not only fickle, but also funded by things that hurt the communities that such scholarships would help out most.

Emory still has a lot of other issues, just because of being in the South.

Anybody in GA can take their children to pre-K for free.

Any young person in GA can work hard and go to top schools for free.

I think that’s a pretty awesome deal for disadvantaged communities. Especially compared to every other state that has legal lotteries and eye watering tuition.

Sure, I’d rather lotteries were illegal again. But I’d keep the HOPE baby as I dump the bath water. It’s a model for other states!

You would rather be hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt than go to a top engineering school for free?

You’re aware those same hicks with their backward values that voted for values you don’t agree with are the same hicks, with the same values, that made GT free for you to attend?

Those conservative evangelicals who agreed to legalize the state lottery only if all proceeds go to tuition and early childhood education - they’re the reason your education was free.

“ being physically located in, and largely beholden to, a state that doesn’t care about, ”

You appreciate the irony that this hostile state and her backwards residents paid to have this top school with top facilities and top researchers, right?

From what I have seen (I’m at Tulane but have friends at Emory), they seem to have detailed plans and attention to making sure research labs have strict occupancy limits.

Edit that “buy out” to “form some sort of public/private partnership with an independent board”

I think things are too entrenched these days, but the schools strong points complement each other so well.

Kind of on the right track. As a student myself, we have realized the value of a college education comes from the on campus environment. So, if it's online, we will take gap quarters/years and universities will receive $0.(I am planning to take Fall quarter off because online is not worth it)

please explain this to me how the value comes from the on campus education?

It’s not just about class. It’s about building your network and having experiences. Many aspects of class are also compromised online as well.

I'm no longer in school (graduated a while ago), but I would make the same decision as the person you are responding to. What I liked about school was the social aspect that made learning easier/more enjoyable. It was nice walking into the library and recognizing a face from class to chat about what was taught. It was nice running into somebody while walking to class to chat about what was going to be taught/what was taught.

There is a spontaneous social element to the learning process that I believe can't be replicated online.

While that aspect is nice, I firmly believe that basically any college class can be aced by attending lectures and more importantly, reading the book.

I disagree pretty strongly with this. For me, the social elements of college were pretty distracting and unhelpful to learning/earning my degree. Secondly, with technologies like Zoom, Slack, and general learning management software, it's actually very easy to collaborate with other students for studying, working on problem sets (when allowed), etc. And finally the cost of college is absurd. Even assuming that the tuition cost were the same, going online would allow for cheaper housing costs and would give back some valuable time.

Overall, I feel like online makes better sense for college education than in-person. But that's also my long-term view and I wouldn't expect an impromptu switchover like we're facing now to be the best. There are also a large percentage of degree programs that do require hands-on instruction like say, a degree in chemistry, which I agree would have to stay on-campus.

Networking, engagement with peers, connections to incubators and startups.

Those things can easily happen online.

I took one of the first online classes 20 years ago. The opportunity for connecting was different but friends will be made regardless.

Aside from the other good answers, there's also a much simpler reason: lab classes. CS and math are the only STEM fields I can think of where you won't have at least a few classes with labs where access to equipment and hands-on instruction are key.

I wish it was possible for this upcoming fall semester to be some kind of internship/research program period instead. It seems like every type of student other than performance arts could find some organization to do some kind of remote work for in their field. It'd probably require federal funding though.

> they won’t be able to charge what they normally charge for online classes

I have two contradictory points for this.

One, I applied for online graduate programs several years ago and found that the majority of programs had the same cost for online and offline tuition. The idea that online programs should be cheaper is not really supported in general. You could argue that as a whole college education is overpriced, but clearly the market will bear it.

Two, the program I did select is Georgia Tech's online masters of computer science (OMSCS) which is: 1) significantly cheaper that on-campus tuition 2) really excellent in terms of quality and 3) a very enormous program with thousands of students.

In this case it's unfortunate they aren't drawing from their experience in multiple successful OMS programs to create a high quality online experience for a large number of students.

Even if the cost of tuition is the same, these universities invested millions and billions of dollars into building on-campus amenities, that they can't charge their students for, if the students are learning remotely.

They can and they do. I've paid Georgia Tech athletic fees while attending remote campuses with no amenities.

Course credit costs perhaps not, but a completely on-line option guts revenues in terms of room and board, for instance. Any institution that is tuition dependent and has built an operating budget around being a residential college/university cannot survive that without significant restructuring.

Reopening universities and colleges is also a major threat to the entire community. Here in WA over a hundred students tested positive this week after partying at their frat. In Alabama, students are intentionally trying to get infected. This will happen en masse if universities open their campuses and those infected will spread the infections into not only the immediate community but also the ones that many of them traveled hundreds of miles from to attend university. It would be pure madness to reopen or to pretend like university students will social distance and wear masks.

Here's a pretty good thread from a professor arguing that the Alabama story is very likely made up: https://twitter.com/thrasherxy/status/1278703871053963269

But I totally agree that the entire premise of colleges trying to function as an on-campus institution is absolutely absurd until there's a vaccine.

> until there's a vaccine

Why do people think we're getting some magic vaccine? Gavi/Gates have pushed this "18 months" bullshit, where they're developing some magical vaccine for a family of viruses that's never had a vaccine before, and every previous attempt has been met with either bad immunopathic responses or immune enhancement syndrome[0].

Vaccines takes decades to develop safely, and the techniques being proposed now have never led to a vaccine that made it through clinical trials before.

There is no vaccine coming in any reasonable amount of time. The 100+ companies are take a lot of WHO/government money, and who knows if they'll actually produce anything.

Safe vaccines for new families of viruses take a decade. There is still no vaccine for retroviruses (herpes, HIV, etc.) It's straight up Gates pipe dream to think a safe vaccine for this can be made in a year.

[0]: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-hon...

The Board of Regents are political appointees so I'm not surprised this is the policy they came up with. I'm generally not a fan of blanket shelter in place rules on freedom grounds, but the science is clear on the positive benefits of masks [0]. And there isn't really a down-side.

[0] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

There are a lot of downsides if asymptomatic spread isn't really true (the WHO said it wasn't and then walked it back .. reading a lot of the studies, I think there is a lot of evidence to suggest there is little to no asymptomatic spread; and the push to say otherwise is very political).

Masks are very bad psychologically. They cause judgement and distrust, plus they're a pretty useless placebo effect. This virus is clearly no where near as dangerous as original made out to be, and I the normalization of the mask directly lead to an increase of violence during the recent riots all around the nation. They have the potential to lead people to take more risks and do things they wouldn't normally do[0].

It's absurd to think masks don't have any downsides. They certainly do.

[0]: https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/43402/

Your link is vaguely Freudian storytelling, evoking a sort of secular spirituality more than anything resembling objective science. Here's a sample:

> The wearing of a mask, under conditions in which an individual is aware that their face is no longer their ‘face’, will lead to a transformation away from the usual ‘self’ through a self-attributional process.

Whatever the negative consequences of that self-attributional process, nurses, cleanroom operators, and countless others who routinely wear masks seem to have gotten over it, and to enjoy basically normal social interactions.

You didn't quantify your claims as to the dangers of the virus, but ~0.3% of NYC--of the total population, not those confirmed or estimated infected--is dead from the coronavirus. Treatment has improved (no early ventilator use) since then, but that's a rough lower bound for the IFR. Herd immunity should come much sooner than 1-1/R0 of the population due to heterogeneity, but even a lower bound for IFR times a lower bound for total infected is a lot of dead people.

Finally, the case count is increasing. So regardless of whether the people spreading it are truly asymptomatic, misattributing light symptoms to allergies or similar, or aware that they're seriously sick but going out anyways, they're out there spreading. A mask seems likely enough to help in all three such cases to be clearly cost-effective to me.

Have you tried wearing a mask? What bad experience did you have? Some of the fabric ones are near-impossible to breathe through (especially the handmade ones in that pleated pattern everyone seems to have adopted). Lighter cotton or surgical-style seem fine to me, and are widely used here in California--and have been widely used in East Asia for decades--without obvious negative consequences.

Just to contribute. I have student visa and the "problem" is that with our visa (F1) we are not allowed to have online classes only. We have to attend class for X hour every week. This or we lose our visa. It's an immigration problem.

I sure hope we as a society figure out a way to make college campuses (and physical presence of students) largely unnecessary eventually. I don't expect it to happen in a year, but in-person lectures seemed ridiculous to me 25 years ago, and they seem even more so now when there's abundance of tech and anyone can record 4K videos of arbitrary length. Most of those lectures also sucked ass, since they were slow-moving, but if your attention lapses for like 3 minutes of a difficult lecture, you're lost for the rest of the lecture and there's no way to rewind and listen again. That's not to mention the time spent writing on the chalkboard and speaking - you could take in the same amount of information from a book at easily 3-4x the speed, leaving more time to do practical work that actually helps build the skills.

Of course one still needs to be able to go to labs if one is doing research, but those could be bolstered by not investing in auditoriums, halls, cafes, and other physical infrastructure.

It'd also be great (in the US) to shut down all the sports programs. They're like this weird benign tumor on the side of large schools which costs money and does not provide educational value.

A well designed online course needs online tested milestones, segment by segment. Student get an online automated test. What he gets wrong creates a fork to an online module to teach that item. Fail again = re-teach in a different way. Repeated failmode might attract an online human to step that person along. Then back to the lessons. This is just smart teaching programs do. Labs can be done youtube style, but need careful design to deal with each possible fork in the road where a student can get off track. Some people might not be smart enough for complex abstract stuff - I have met and failed many 'memory machines' - students who can read and repeat everything they see, but are unable to use the knowledge in a novel way that has not been worked out in examples before.I used to tutor goofs like that in Engineering Physics at U of T. They had near perfect recall, but off the beaten track they could not solve new problems. Weekly problem sets were made to make them fail. They fought back with study groups - I was always in demand to help. In the end they failed the problems exams or at year end in the exams because they were basically dummies with near total recall.

What's wild is Georgia tech has a very successful online master's program that apparently everyone forgot about because it could be a great starting point to do everything online.

Online degrees that are marketed as online degrees carry a stigma among employers, because they are perceived as being lower quality than not-online degrees, and the stuff of diploma mills.

My final semester will be entirely online, but I couldn't care less, since my degree isn't an online degree.

> Online degrees that are marketed as online degrees carry a stigma among employers, because they are perceived as being lower quality than not-online degrees, and the stuff of diploma mills.

Do you have some survey results or where are you getting this "fact"?

Sure.

> In 2009, Norina L. Columbaro and Catherine H. Monaghan, researchers at the Cleveland State University, published an article analyzing dozens of studies and popular articles on employers’ perceptions of online degrees. By and large, they found that “gatekeepers”—for example, employers and hiring managers—“have an overall negative perception about online degrees.” In their survey, Columbaro and Monaghan also found several recurring concerns about online degrees. These concerns ranged from a perceived lack of rigor to concerns about the increased potential for academic dishonesty. Not surprisingly, the fact that online degrees were still associated with an earlier generation of diploma mills was also a concern.

https://news.elearninginside.com/have-online-degrees-and-cre...

I think this may be context dependent. My impression is that a lot of people who are mid-career or changing careers get degrees that are online or otherwise don't appear to be top tier, because they simply need to pass a requirement that they get a degree. I think teachers in particular, face requirements to get masters degrees. If you have a statutory or other rule that says you must get a degree, and it's basically a checklist item, then it's in your interest to go for the cheapest, easiest, most accessible option, and not worry about the pedigree or mystique.

Georgia Tech issues the same diplomas for their online and offline masters degree programs.

Please do expand. It's apparent from this list[1] that GaTech differentiates traditional from online.

[1] https://www.gatech.edu/academics/masters-degree-programs

https://omscs.gatech.edu/explore/faq/admissions

>Your diploma will read "Master of Science in Computer Science," exactly the same as those of on-campus graduates. There will be no "online" designation for the degrees of OMS CS graduates.

Getting an MS CS degree from Stanford HCP via SCPD is a major achievement, arguably even more difficult than the on-campus one due to a lack of in-person office hours and having the same lectures/homeworks. GT's OMS CS seems to be crazy as well due to the amount of hours per class. So it likely depends on that particular online degree.

the online classes for the master program are better than the campus ones I took some of those that overlapped with my campus ones because they were shitty.

It's an online masters in computer science, a lot of engineering and science courses require labs that aren't feasible without being present. And even if most of your courses are lab free, from my experience there, I had a lab course most semesters, even if it was just one.

Nobody says you are going to going to school online forever. So I'm not that worried if you have to put your lab courses off by a semester.

"Faculty were already feeling anxious about the upcoming fall semester, GPB News was told, but a recent decision by the Board of Regents and state university system to not require students wear masks in classrooms sent faculty over the edge."

Allowing a gathering of 10+ people in an enclosed space without a mask sounds like a terrible idea.

It's been going on all around this country for over a month now. I think it's safe to say this thing was an gorse overreaction and it's on its way out. Let's stop the mass hysteria

This is not what "on it's [sic] way out" looks like:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/25/record-spikes-in-us-coronavi...

> It's been going on all around this country for over a month now. I think it's safe to say this thing was an gorse overreaction and it's on its way out. Let's stop the mass hysteria

Not based on active hospitalization counts in the current hot zones... complain all you want about test numbers not be comparable day over day, but I haven't seen anyone explain THAT away.

Title: "Georgia Tech Professors Revolt..."

Reality: Georgia Tech Professors release a not-even-strongly-worded letter [1] to express their alarm and recommendations, a letter that doesn't even mention actions they might take if those recommendations are not followed. I guess this counts as a "revolt"?

1: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdjyLGfLIncWtm8fntd...

If you want to see some more direct anger, as well as some indications why they may not be taking that much public action, you can read some more here: https://twitter.com/ibogost/status/1279070755888738305?s=21

I always thought the word "revolt" implied at least some kind of action rather than mere anger. The instant burial of my comment seems to indicate that the word's definition must have changed recently.

It also doesn't seem like anyone is actually confirming these staff members to be on board, as evidenced by the interesting signers such as "Mike Hunt" from the College of Cock among others.

It's a news article headline; I don't think anyone clicked on the link with the expectation that the professors would be literally arming themselves or something ...

I would tend to agree with the parent comment - while they may not be engaging in armed revolt nor are expected to, it seems to me that the line between revolting and not revolting is when you draw the proverbial line in the sand. When you say, "we are committed to working with...blah blah blah" you haven't revolted yet. Revolt doesn't require violence or anger but it does require saying "I/we are not going to do this thing we are being compelled to, period". Saying "we disagree strongly" is not making an ultimatum.

They might be implying that they are considering revolting, though. If I were working there, I would think it better to be more blunt. I bet in private, people are.

Sure, I could see that. But it’s a newspaper headline.

It’s not the title of a scientific paper.

And since we can’t devise repeatable experiments for the truth or falsehood of news articles (though I give it 50/50 odds someone might post a comment now proposing how we could ;) ) news articles cannot have the same kind of confidence that scientific papers have.

As revolting as that idea may be ;)

This sounds like a plot to deal with faculties top-heavy with senior tenured profs - who will be on that top rung of risk in the death lottery = save Georgia Tech a bundle. Prove me wrong!

Recent and related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23726410

Taking a look at excess mortality:

https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid

(scroll down to the Economist graphs)

It would appear that the worst occurred in the April timeframe (Europe, New York), and that we've mostly reached a point of no excess mortality at this point.

However, if another wave were to come through, the graphs are pretty sobering.

For 65+, excess deaths peaked at 35k/week extra

For 45-64, excess deaths peaked at 2.5k/week extra

For 15-44, excess deaths peaked at .8k/week extra

So, most students returning is a negligible risk, but for some professors, it could be daunting, if there were to be another wave.

You mean another one than the one currently happening in South America, India and the US?

Also, it is not just deaths. The less at risk groups infect others, that can be more at risk.

It's unfortunate that the excess mortality is not a metric that is rigorously collected at this time. As a result, it lags quite a bit. We'll know in a week or so how June looked.

You're right that it is not just deaths, but morbidity. Someone who gets on a vent due to covid may never regain the life they had previously.

However, we've learned a bit since April. Wearing masks works with social distancing, but requires administrative enforcement.

Sweden has kept their schools open during this time (through high school) and offers an interesting point of comparison. It hasn't appeared to cause any problems for them. The main problems they've had are in the immigrant communities (220% higher rates of covid) and in elder care facilities.

> It hasn't appeared to cause any problems for them.

By which you mean, it is neck-and-neck with the United States and Brazil in daily cases per capita, and is soundly leading both countries in deaths per capita?

Their strategy of 'isolate the vulnerable population and do little else' worked great, except for the part where it hasn't worked at all because... The vulnerable population is getting sick and dying.

If you look at the linked data, you'll see that Sweden reached zero excess mortality by the end of May. This is a very good indication that their approach is working as they expected it would. Their execution has not been perfect, but they've been transparent about that and are working to address the known issues.

Georgia, like most states, is 2 weeks in arrears submitting mortality data to the CDC, so I wouldn't jump to any conclusions.

It's amazing to me that we're 100 days into this thing and we still don't have accurate up-to-the-day mortality data.

Everyone in the USA will get C19.

So what's the argument here?

They will overload the hospital system?

The very few (at a university) who might die, might get a extra year of life by the university lockdown for longer?

Where they wait for the non existent vaccine or treatment (many years away at best)?

Do they have an actual exact reason other than a wishy washy fear?

What mathematical model do they hope for by delaying?

Fuck Georgia tech.

Reopen for the students, have those at risk work remote or lecture remote.

We can’t assume a vaccine will be developed, so we need to act accordingly.

To make a political post even more political...

Do American university staff belong to unions? Including the faculty?

Hopefully this can be resolved with words, but striking for better working conditions has a very long history.

They don't have the right to collectively bargain in Georgia (the state).

Is this because the are public sector employees?

No, because Georgia police officers, who are public employees, have unions.

Likewise in Wisconsin. The state government did what they could get away with. They can deny union rights to public sector employees, but aren't required to treat all public sector employees the same.

Still, formal union representation would not prevent a wildcat strike.

I'm not aware of any faculty unions representing professors. There are some academic student employee (inc. grad students) unions and a handful of postdoc unions.

some faculty are unionized (I know of at least a few where the faculty are all NEA members)

Additionally there are not-officially recognized groups such as AAUP (American Association of University Professionals) that represent faculty issues.

clarifying my own post...because my language may have been confusing

faculty actually refers to the body of faculty at a university or in a department as a whole...when writing to certain communities

What I meant was that certain universities have the whole body of faculty unionized

At private schools there are no unions due to NLRB v. Yeshiva University. The SC denied faculty the right to collectively bargain...

I am laughing inside...not at you but at the idea. Unions are illegal in GA not just that but a lot of academic staff are adjuncts very few are tendered professors. That means they are rehired or not every year or couple of years as needed.

Union is a 4-letter word in the US, especially in red states

In my mind a key part of what makes a university a university is that the faculty are the ultimate authority. Thats's the whole point of tenure. The administration is supposed to exist to handle details needed to facilitate the work of the faculty. That unionization of faculty (especially senior faculty) has apparently become necessary really speaks to the massive amount of administrative creep that has taken place, and the perversion of these institutions from academic centers into businesses. It still isn't too late for professors to reclaim their rightful authority, but many of them are too ground down, overworked, or willing to be just another employee at another big organization without understanding their broader responsibilities to education in general.

The US Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that faculty at private universities can be classified as managers, and hence denied the right to unionize. This probably isn’t relevant for GATech as it is a public school, but it does mean at many universities faculty are at the relative mercy of the administration.

Air Force Academy has already re-opened with next semesters' students already there. They are marching socially distanced and with masks and elevated hand washing.

On a side note - several USAFA cadets committed suicide due to lockdown-induced mental health issues a few months back... so it's pretty safe to say that the cure is more deadly than the illness (at least currently... 0 cadets have died from covid-19 while 2 have died from suicide).

> several USAFA cadets committed suicide due to lockdown-induced mental health issues a few months back.

My condolences. The Air Force Academy is a golden ticket to become an Air Force pilot. I can't imagine what it would take to override that prospect in one's mind to the point of bringing them to the brink of suicide. I understand that forced isolation sucks, but not to this point.

https://www.airforcemag.com/usaf-suicides-skyrocket-in-2019/

> A total of 137 Airmen took their own lives in 2019—a 33 percent increase from the 103 suicides in 2018 despite service efforts to tackle the problem.

I'm not sure you can conclude much from two.

What is not discussed there is that all these professors signing the document expect to be paid the same as last year.

One might argue that if the lectures are online then the tuition (and professor pay) should be proportional to the value they produce - and that can't possibly be the same as last year.

Shouldn't salary be market based, theoretically? Salaries are not based on produced value typically. They are result of negotiations.

Yeah, agreed. The market sets the price.

Right, but those negotiations did assume face to face instructions. If they don't teach face to face then the terms need to be re-negotiated.

All I am saying here is not that you should push faculty to do things they don't want - just to have everyone understand they can't get the same salary as before if they provide less value as before.

How would you calculate the reduction in value of lectures if given online?

I'd argue the value of the lectures is about the same for large classes, it's the ability to ask questions or students ability to focus that gets harder online.

And at the same time though, it's also generally more work to set things up for an online class, or at least it can be, especially for classes with labs, or ones that usually involved using a whiteboard. It may be a reduction in value to the students, but it's also an increase in work for the professors probably.

is that a good argument?

This product if worth X amount for you, but I can only build it for 2X

An online course that an average professor puts together will be much worse than what is already available on Coursera.

This is what scares the administration, they know cannot compete with that, and bigger things are at stake, like the future of the entire institution.

I'm not arguing it one way or another, but just saying that even if it's true that the class provides less "value" if it's online, it's almost definitely more work, or at least different work than most of the professors signed up to be doing.

If anything, a lot of the cost of a college tuition these days isn't in the pay for the instructors anyway. It's in the campus, the labs, the sports, the social life/club funding and the like.

Ok, are you arguing that all courses will be online, but the campus, labs and sports will be in person?

It seems like you are missing the point, if the student is not coming the professor can't get paid either. Do you thing GT will just print more money?

I'm saying that, in a world where campus needs to be closed for safety reasons, but professors can teach online, it's possible to both reduce/discount tuition and still pay professors near what they were making before since they're still doing as much or more work as before. Most of the cost of tuition is physical-world/social events that couldn't take place if campus was closed.

I'm not sure what will end up happening, or if it will be fair to either party here. And obviously, if students drop out over this, then that will cause financial issues all over, but that doesn't seem like what's happening. Students are still enrolled and interested in taking classes where possible. On the other end, telling non-tenured professors that they now have to teach entirely online for less money is an easy way for them to go find a different job, which isn't good for GT either.

I think if they move all online, the university will have reduced income, that in turn will set the new salaries.

It will in a way work out, all I am saying that I don't think these petitioners ever thought about it, or considered that.

[I attended GT for Computer Science and signed one of these petitions]

This comment seems to misunderstand professors and universities. Instruction is a relatively small part of professor responsibilities. Most tenured professors will teach perhaps one class a year, some one class a semester. Some do more, though often by choice and at least at Georgia Tech, much of the undergraduate instruction is done by lecturers, who are not tenure track faculty.

So the value they produce won't decrease by much. In fact it might actually increase. Georgia Tech is, and has been, one of the leaders in online instruction through the OMSCS program. This allowed professors to be in many ways more valuable and teach more students per professor (with an increase in TAs).

My experience is limited mostly to the College of Computing, but some courses taught by other Colleges (notably gen-ed physics I and II in the College of Sciences) have been optionally taught in mixed online form for years (I took an "inverted" Physics course where the lectures were online in 2014). This allowed in-lecture time to be much more tailored to specific student questions.

So there's no a priori reason to believe that online instruction is less valuable. (This isn't the same, by the way, as the opinion that university education that is completely online is as valuable as in person, there are environmental factors that are advantageous for in person experiences).

There are some classes and subjects where this doesn't always work (Engineering courses often need specialized equipment for more applied course), but these aren't the majority of classes, and forcing a CS professor to lecture in person when the same course, often taught by the same professor, already exists as a MOOC is ridiculous.

It's sort of wild you talking about taking those physics courses. I was one of the research scientists supporting Mike and Ed teaching those courses. I always wondered if people liked them or not. We only ever had surveys and such I never interacted with students one on one.

Are you seriously arguing that a professor teaching/working from home will produce the same value? And that the students should pay the same tuition as before? Why did we ever have in person classes then if the value is the same?

(Later you also state that there are subjects where it cannot possibly work at all)

I am not saying that online education is useless, just that it produces less value. I also believe that professors are not even remotely open to the idea that this could be reflected in their salaries.

> Are you seriously arguing that a professor teaching/working from home will produce the same value?

Lecturing online vs in person, yes I think there's not a huge difference. From my experience at Tech, I think of all of the parts of the environment (other students, 1:1 time with professors, research opportunities, labs, lectures, random events, extracurriculars, etc.) lectures brought some of the least academic value, and are impacted the least by the move online. Class structures as a whole are impacted, but a professor lecturing into a chalkboard on how to take eigenvalues isn't a better experience than what you can get on youtube today. The value I as a student got wasn't from the lectures, it was from everything else.

And you can't provide the everything else anyway.

> Later you also state that there are subjects where it cannot possibly work.

Indeed, but that doesn't excuse not trying for the subjects where it can.

> I am not saying that online education is useless, just that it produces less value, and I don't think that professors are even remotely open to the idea that this could be reflected in their salaries.

And I'm saying that the opposite is likely true: the OMSCS program is cheaper tuition wise, but still an enormous cash cow for Georgia Tech. So if you mean value per student, maybe, but that has, again, little to do with the professor, it has to do with the other services the university environment provides. In an online education scheme, the value provided by the professor actually increases, while the value to charge the student decreases, because the student no longer has access to all of the other valuable things that the university provides that have nothing to do with the professor (everything from the concrete: a world class weightlifting studio to the more nebulous: the ability to interact and network with other students, which is for example a key reason that schools can charge more for their MBA programs, it has little to do with the classes and more to do with the people, the other students, you'll meet).

> I think of all of the parts of the environment (other students, 1:1 time with professors, research opportunities, labs, lectures, random events, extracurriculars, etc.) lectures brought some of the least academic value,

But you are not getting any of these either! You seem to focus too much on lectures. The learning experience obviously includes all that above.

>In an online education scheme, the value provided by the professor actually increases

ok this is so wrong, I don't even know where to start or if it is even worth discussing. Most of the professors there haven't got a clue on how to design an online course. That takes years of practice, a loop of evaluation, enthusiasm and hard work (I know because I developed an online course and it took me five years to get it right). What they produce will be a tedious, unwatchable hourlong expose that will be a burden to follow.

Saying that a professor produces even more value online is absurd - perhaps relatively speaking since if students don't get to be there thus compared to nothing, or course, it is a lot.

My opinion firmly stands, none of these universities can even hope to pay their professors the same if they teach online.

This is why the administration wants the face-to-face so badly, do you honestly think that they have not thought about how insanely badly it makes them look? They know what the letter signers don't, there is no future if students are not there.

> But you are not getting any of these either! You seem to focus too much on lectures. The learning experience obviously includes all that above.

I know, that's why I said "And you can't provide the everything else anyway." That has nothing to do with the professor. The professor's value doesn't affect the value one gets from extracurriculars. The professor shouldn't be paid less because the university can't provide extracurriculars, because, under your scheme the professor is still providing the same value.

> Saying that a professor produces even more value online is absurd

A single professor can, on campus, teach a course of at most ~200 students. Some universities can support more for a few courses due to larger lecture halls, but at Georgia Tech 2-250 is the limit. On the other hand, in an online course the same professor can teach thousands of students. Georgia Tech is the prime example here: the OMSCS program has professors teaching tons of students per professor.

> Most of the professors there haven't got a clue on how to design an online course.

Indeed, and you'll see that many of the professors are complaining because they weren't given clear timelines. You overestimate the time component required for many subjects, I saw approximately 3 months to convert an existing on campus CS course to online, given the resources (which Tech has), which again, remember this is a university with the resources and experience to provide multiple masters degree programs entirely online, has at least one lab devoted to online education and MOOC research, etc.

> My opinion firmly stands, none of these universities can even hope to pay their professors the same if they teach online.

Sure, but not because the professor is providing in less value, but because the university is providing less value.

you use "value" without ever defining it nor how that "value" is greater when in person compared to online. This also assumes that salaries are only dictated by the "value" produced- which I don't think stands up to analysis.

Nonetheless, the reason why institutions are biased towards face-to-face is because 1) without face-to-face, there is no need for room and board- which is a significant portion of revenue. 2) Support service contracts - such as dining/cafeteria services - may stipulate that institutions still are financial obligated even if they are not generating the typical revenue from the services. There are other examples, but as I said in a previous post -operating budgets of tuition dependent colleges/universities are generated with the assumption of physical bodies being present - and all the peripheral income that generates. Most schools would not be able to survive without that income.

nahhh this is the same as the opinion that online university education can be equally valuable as in person. It jus got exposed now for anyone still having doubts

I don't disagree with that. In fact, I said as much when I stated

> This isn't the same, by the way, as the opinion that university education that is completely online is as valuable as in person, there are environmental factors that are advantageous for in person experiences

But that has nothing to do with professor salaries. A professor's value to a student is about the same whether they're lecturing in person or through a screen. The rest of the system however has less value to the student. But that the university can't provide as much value doesn't impact the professor's value. So if you're looking at this from a value-driven economy, the professor's salary shouldn't change, the university should profit less from the Prof's labor because the university is providing less value-add over just the professor.

Or maybe if the lectures are online they should be paid proportional to the effort involved, which can't be possibly the same if you have to come up with new materials, find new methods of teaching and engaging the students, etc...

You speak as if teaching in-person is an apples to apples comparison to teaching online where online is strictly easier and of less value. Having done both, this is far from an equal comparison. Putting student value aside, the skill sets needed are different. A professor that can teach in-person AND online equally well is not easy to find. So unless the university is willing to fire their professors and hire ones that are better trained for online teaching, I see no reason for the professors to take some sort of pay cut.

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